"Full of sound and fury..."

At first glance, Ed Pallatella’s long article in Sunday’s Erie Times-News on “How Judge Joyce ruled” promised to be a revealing exposition of the circumstances that led to the judge’s indictment by a federal grand jury on insurance fraud and related charges several months ago, to which Joyce has emphatically pleaded innocent, denying all charges.

Length of the article alone, starting on Page One above the fold, and jumping to Page Four, coupled with what was obviously time-consuming and extensive research into some of the many cases in which Judge Joyce was involved, and how he and his colleagues on the state Superior Court handled them, seemed to augur in favor of significant findings and worthwhile time spent which would shed a welcome and bright light on the case.

But on second glance, and after several re-readings, I was forced to conclude that the article was, to quote the bard of Avon, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Or at least very little.

I’ve followed the case closely since it’s inception. I couldn’t find any pathway in Pallatella’s story which advanced the fundamental premises of the case. It’s long on mundane facts, but short on conclusive findings.

The lead paragraph subtley sets up readers for a finding of culpability on the judge’s part by noting that he “often sided legally with the industry he is now accused of defrauding.” Aha, that lead seems to say, Ed’s got him by the short ones. Read on. But 15 minutes and several thousand words later, we seem to have come full circle, 360 degrees from the beginning back to the beginning again, with nothing resolved along the way.

This is one of those journalistic fishing expeditions in which the reporter/writer begins with a predilection he expects in the end to fulfill, in this case, a series of preconceived rulings on cases before him on which the judge set out prospectively to influence a settlement of his allegedly fraudulent claim magnanimously in his favor.

While it’s true, there was a magnanimous settlement in the judge’s favor (though a terrible outcome), the reporter found no link between it and the judge’s rulings on insurance cases brought before him, even though most of them favored the insurance industry, setting invaluable legal precedents on its behalf.

No link, dammit. No link! That left Ed and his editors with a conundrum. Ed spent countless hours on this story, poring over hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages of court documents in its pursuit, interviewing numerous prominent subjects, ignoring other unrelated stories with potentially meaningful outcomes. But there’s no dramatic denouement here. Plus, the Sunday editor left a big space in the Sunday news hole for the story, with nothing else to fill it at the last minute. Was it all for naught?

Wait, someone says. The story is long. It’s detailed. It’s a liberal education on the operation of the state Superior Court. It’s well written. It has lots of quotes from important people. We know it doesn’t mean anything, but if we give it top play, maybe nobody will notice.

Sorry, folks. The emperor has no clothes.

The one aspect of the case which cries for enlightenment, and which Pallatella ignores once again in this most recent of his series of writings on this important matter, is why he has never identified or interviewed the driver of the Ford Explorer which rear-ended Judge Joyce’s Mercedes, leading to his unexamined claim and munificent settlements.

Surely that driver, whoever he or she is, could provide some compelling insight into the judge’s behavior and conduct in the wake of the accident, or perhaps even contradict his version of events.

Is it possible, for example that Judge Joyce not only fabricated the extent of his injuries, if he did, but also deliberately caused the other driver to collide with his vehicle in order to set up his allegedly fraudulent insurance claims? That’s a growing trend in auto insurance fraud in some venues. If the judge were capable of fabricating the fraudulent aftermath of the “accident,” why not the accident itself?
Despite his indefatigable inquiries into this case, Pallatella seems to be intent upon avoiding what may be the most significant question it raises.

Finally, it’s poor form to separate the accused’s assertion of innocence from the first mention of the charges against him, as Pallatella did here. The former should follow directly on the heels of the latter, and should have been in the lead or second paragraph of this story.